The Psychiatrist's Departure

From Novi Prelom (Banja Luka)

Radovan Karadzic is gone. After six years. For us, these
have been years in which, to paraphrase Kolakowski, the devil
has reappeared in our history. We have had a war, our life has
been reduced to the ethnos alone, we have been returned several
hundred years into the past and have become imprisoned in a
project called Republika Srpska. We are humiliated and
despised.

This how we can describe, in brief, the results of the
monstrous policy conducted by the Sarajevo psychiatrist. Not
on his own, of course. Surrounded by a group of hypocrites and
acolytes, he almost forgot that by starting the war he took upon
himself an enormous responsibility, especially for the people in
whose name it was all done. We too forgot that responsibility.
And now in silence we watch Radovan Karadzic's departure.
Many have a sense of emptiness. This, of course, is normal and
human. It is also normal and human to say that there is
nothing to be sad about.

I hope that his departure will, above all, signal the
possibility of changes that will permit us to undertake the long
and hard journey of reconstruction of the country and a society
befitting human beings. Within the framework of Karadzic's
policy and mindset, such a journey was indeed impossible. This
is why Radovan Karadzic's departure must in every way be
welcomed.

The Philosopher's Arrival

On Sunday 14 July, a meeting of support for Radovan Karadzic and
Ratko Mladic was held in Trebinje. The meeting as such was
nothing unusual. The iconography and much of what was said
were the same as at all similar meetings in the past. But
there was something new, nevertheless. Messrs Aleksa Buha,
Momir Vojvodic, Simeon Djuretic and other such toilers for the
people told the gathered populace that 'we have drawn a line and
nobody can come in [to Republika Srpska]. As for us, we shall
not cross the line either.'

The message, however morbid, is very clear. The highest
national interest for these people is to create a prison, a
ghetto. The person who said this is Aleksa Buha, a professor
who used to teach German classical philosophy at the University
of Sarajevo. He came to Trebinje as a statesman to legitimize
a fascistic policy, signalling that he himself believed in it.
In Buha's view, the Serb people should live unnaturally and
abormally - should remain fully self-sufficient.

The keepers of the Serb people's souls will tell you that
this is what the people want. And they have indeed brought the
people to the point where it really does not know what it wants.
My Serb people! Can you open your eyes and see where they are
leading you? Can you lift your head and raise yourself from
the gutter into which you have been cast, not so much by the
world, nor by various fundamentalists or Ustashe or whatever,
but by your own chosen leaders? Do you have the courage to
look up and ahead, and to start along a path that is worthy of
humans? Along a path that is different from the one along which
all the various psychiatrists and doctors of science are leading
you? I believe that you can and must do so.